BERLIN (AP) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel has visited the remains of the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau in southern Germany, where more than 43,000 people were killed by the Nazis from 1933 to 1945.

Merkel’s visit on Tuesday evening was the first by a German chancellor to Dachau.

She was invited by a former inmate, 93-year-old Max Mannheimer, who was liberated from Dachau by American soldiers in 1945. Beforehand, she said she had been touched that Mannheimer, the head of the survivor group of Dachau, had invited her.

She said she was traveling there with feelings of shame and sadness, adding: “What happened at the concentration camps was and continues to be incomprehensible.”

On Saturday, Merkel said anti-Semitism and racism remain a threat to democracy in Europe.